A Fight for Racial and Gender Equality

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the harsh realities of what life was like for some women. Although women were beginning to experience some freedom, their husbands still had a say in what they did, which means they wouldn’t take into consideration what their wives wanted or needed. It is learned that the narrator is suffering from mental illness who feels that she would be better off experiencing freedom and going out to help with her illness. Unfortunately, her husband John, who also happens to be her doctor, feels that it is best to isolate her in her room with very little outside contact. Although she tries to voice her feelings and opinions, she is quickly shut down by John. By the end of the story, the wallpaper has driven her insane, making her feel as though the wallpaper has actually trapped women which symbolizes how she feels about her marriage. Society has come a long way since this story was written, but the conflict presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is still one that is relevant today. Society has managed to find a way to continue oppressing women in a way that is detrimental to women’s health and their children.

The difference between both
conflicts presented is the difference in social class and racial group.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes from the perspective of a white woman who
belongs a rich, upper middle class. Gilman’s purpose for writing this story was
to share her experiences in hopes of changing the future for all women. This
goal of hers was accomplished, but to a certain extent. Although society has
progressed a lot since the late 1890’s, we can still see this conflict today in
lower-income families and communities. There are groups of women who are still
struggling with their mental and physical health due to not being listened to
by their health care professionals. Great strides have been made in the last
hundred years, but there are still various consequences that have resulted from
the original conflict presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The lives of women
of color are still at risk today, regardless of their economic status. The
connection between both conflicts is the internalized racism and misogyny that
is still alive and present in society today.

Some of the ways in which Gilman’s story is
interesting is because of the way the narrator does not have a name and also
because it only focuses on what life was like for women who belonged to an
upper class. The narrator having no name really stands out and it seems that
Gilman chose to do this to represent the rest of women in society at the time,
not just one specific group of women. The narrator doesn’t want to acclimate to
a life where she won’t get the help she needs or won’t be able to engage in the
activities she enjoys doing. She notices how the women in her life are unlike
her, in which they are willing to do whatever their husbands and society tell
them to. She is cautious around Jennie, her sister-in-law, because she believes
Jennie “thinks it is the writing” that made the narrator sick (Gilman 423). The
narrator had to hide who she was and what she did because she feared that her
own family would send her away to Weir Mitchell to receive a different kind of
treatment. This conflict is not unusual today and still exists for women of color
and lower income families. Although today the situation is different, society
has managed to find a way to continue to oppress women in certain communities.
One consequence of this is that “African American women are three to four times
more likely to die from childbirth than non-Hispanic white women, and
socioeconomic status, education, and other factors do not protect against this
disparity” (Novoa and Taylor). There are several different factors that come
into play, but one of the main ones is mental health. “Maternal mental health
issues among African American women are largely underreported” (Novoa and
Taylor). For a number of different reasons, most women aren’t able to ask for
help just like the narrator in Gilman’s story and the results have shown that
it has taken a toll on these women and their families.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator
conceals her pain and suffering because of the way society views women as being
incapable of expressing their needs. At the beginning of the story, the narrator
reveals how “John laughs
at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” which
shows the way in which this kind of toxic behavior is normalized (Gilman 419).
Because of these expectations, it shows why she would avoid bringing up
anything regarding her mental health. At one point in the story when discussing
the narrator’s recovery, she tries to divert the subject to talk about her
mental health but as soon as she began, she “stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a
stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word” (Gilman 425). This
kind of conflict can still be seen today in a hospital where some women
continue to receive horrible care. In both of these situations, the husband and
doctors would be expected to do everything in their power to help these women,
but unfortunately it does not work out too well for either group. A recent incident
from 2016 shows how an African-American woman Simone Landrum experienced a
difficult pregnancy but “she recalls, her doctor told her to lie down — and calm
down” making her feel as if “he threw me away”
(Villarosa). Unfortunately, a few days after being sent
home, she was back in the hospital with the exact same pain but this time it
resulted in her losing the child and the nurses mentioned that she was sick and
“very lucky to be alive” (Villarosa). Both
the narrator and Landrum were trying to receive the help they needed from the
doctors but instead they were ignored which resulted in the narrator going
insane and Landrum losing her baby.

Gilman was
criticizing the way men would belittle not just women’s health, but also any
other small detail about their lives. Women weren’t regarded as equals because
men were always the ones who held power in society. Much has changed as shown in
current events, but not enough are focusing on all women and the different
struggles they experience. One of
the struggles that is common now are black women during their pregnancies. The
conflict in the story was originally targeted towards all women but now it is
much more common in lower social and economic classes and colored women. According
to collected data, Kacey Eichelberger states that “black women face
across their reproductive lives and conclude that these outcomes are not only
statistically significant, but morally significant and fundamentally unjust”
(Eichelberger 1771). These women experience twice as many risks than a white or
Hispanic woman would. There are several factors as to why these risks are
occurring much more often for black women, such as little access to healthcare.
It seems that Gilman would have wanted to achieve gender equity with her story,
but it is also important to prioritize racial equity in a situation like this.

With the ending of the story and how the narrator ended up going insane, Gilman was trying to show the harm that would occur when medical professionals refuse to acknowledge women and their cries for help and why it is important to care for mothers and pregnant women. She knew she had the responsibility to do what’s right and express how unjust society was back then. Despite having to suffer through her mental illness, Gilman never gave up on trying to make a change whether it was for just one woman or all of them. Although we have come a long way from where we once were, we still have a long way to go before we can say that all women are regarded equally.